Jim's Marketing Blog

Marketing tips and ideas to help you grow your business

The most powerful form of marketing on the planet?

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Marketing Tips, marketing advice, ideas

Endorsed Relationships, have been referred to by marketing experts, including Jay Abraham, as the most powerful form of marketing in the world.  I totally agree.  This brief post, will show you what endorsed relationships are and how you can use them to market your business.

Endorsed relationships: What are they?

An endorsed relationship, in marketing terms, is simply a relationship you form with another person / company / brand, where they endorse (or recommend) you and your services to their clients, customers and contacts.  This can come via literally any form of marketing.

The most powerful form of endorsed relationship comes when someone, who already has the trust of a network of people, personally recommends you and your services to them.  Unlike a testimonial, which is usually placed on YOUR website or in YOUR marketing, an endorsed relationship sees the endorser recommending you to THEIR clients and friends – People they have a strong, existing relationship with.

This is where the real magic is and why this is such a powerful and effective form of marketing!

I have personally used endorsed relationships for over 20 years, to generate millions of pounds and dollars worth of new business, for my clients.  I have OFTEN seen them generate over 50% positive response rates and occasionally, over 80/90%!

Endorsed relationships in action

Here is a quick example:

Bob runs a IT repair business.  He encourages his accountant to endorse him, when the accountant next does a mail shot to his 1,000 locally-based clients.  So, when the accountant sends his next mailing, he includes a powerful endorsement of Bob’s IT services and recommends his clients call Bob, if they have an IT problem.

Because the accountant is a trusted advisor to these 1,000 businesses, the endorsement of Bob’s services is extremely powerful.  With a correctly written letter, Bob could generate more new business from this one, simple exercise, than from 2 years worth of networking or thousands spent on advertising!

Endorsed relationships: Some simple guidelines for marketing success

  • Endorsed relationships, like the Joint Ventures I wrote about yesterday, have to be mutually beneficial for them to work.  If you want someone to recommend you and your business to their highly valued clients or customers, there needs to be a good reason for them to do so. People will not “just do it” because it’s going to make you rich!
    • For instance, I once knew a Bank Manager, who recommended me to all his banks clients, because if they worked with me, their businesses grew and so did their need for more and more of the bank’s services.  By recommending me in this way, his clients benefited, he benefited and so did I.
  • The relationship between the person endorsing you and their contacts is pivotal to the success of the exercise.  Getting a highly respected professional to recommend you to a group of people, who value and trust that person’s judgement is marketing gold dust.  Last year, one of my clients generated the equivalent of 25% of her annual turnover in just 12 hours, after a successful endorsed relationship exercise, with a highly respected professional!
  • If the person endorsing you is regularly recommending people to their contacts, their recommendation will be of far less value, than one from someone who is more discerning.  For example, there are well-known self-help / personal development gurus, who will recommend ANYTHING for a fee.  As such, their recommendation means very little.  So, align yourself with people, whose word is trusted and respected.
  • If you are using written marketing for an endorsed relationship, the wording is extremely important.  Because of the potential value to you of the end result, I would STRONGLY recommend you get a copy writer to compose it.  It could be one of the best marketing investments you will ever make.

Think first!

In order for your endorsed relationship to work, you will need to plan it out in advance.  You will need to hand pick the right people, find a motivating way to reward them.  Just as importantly, if you want it to work, you will need to have a process in place, to deal with what is often a massive number of enquiries or leads in a very short period of time.

Although it sounds simple, I strongly recommend you do your homework before diving in.  The vast majority of endorsed relationships conducted by non marketing professionals fail, because of poor planning. I have no doubt that some of the people reading this, will already have experienced what happens, when you pick the wrong partner or they use the wrong message when endorsing you.

So, plan ahead, take your time and do it right!

Tip: If you found this useful, you can get my latest ideas delivered direct to your inbox, for free, right here.

What are Joint Ventures and how do they work?

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Joint Ventures, often known simply as JV’s, can be an extremely effective way to generate new business.  This is probably why so many of you asked me for information on Joint Ventures, when I asked you for your marketing questions recently.

The following is a brief explanation of what JV’s are and how they work.

Joint Ventures explained

I’m sure there are a few different definitions of the term Joint Venture, but it’s actually pretty straight forward.  It’s simply a way for 2 or more parties to market their services more effectively.  This usually means reducing the cost of one’s marketing, increasing the reach of one’s marketing or both.  Here’s a common example:

2 or more companies can put a mail shot together, where a piece of marketing from each company is included in the envelope.  The cost of the mailing is usually shared between both companies.  This is most effective, when YOUR marketing piece is being sent to THEIR mailing list.  You should then reciprocate, by offering THEM the same opportunity with YOUR mailing list.  This form of cross marketing can be extremely powerful, if you pick the right JV partner.

Joint Ventures and potential hazards

There are a few things you need to consider, before investing in a Joint Venture.  These include:

  • Never do a JV with someone you don’t know or have not thoroughly researched.  This week alone, I have seen someone on Twitter, openly recommending a well-known con artist to her clients and friends!  Whilst this was not a JV, it is an example of how easy it is to align one’s reputation, with someone that can seriously damage their own good name.
  • Find a Joint Venture partner, who is in a complimentary but non-conflicting industry to your own.  For instance, an accountant could offer my marketing services to her contacts and I could offer the accountant’s services to my contacts.  That’s because neither of us offer a service, which might take business from the other.
  • The most successful JV’s are mutually beneficial.  As with any deal, it’s really important that both parties benefit equally.  If you find that you’re the one getting all the new business and not the other person, there’s no incentive for them to continue.If this happens, consider offering the other person a commission or reward for anything you generate. Keep it balanced and everyone benefits!

Joint Ventures can be a useful way to reduce your marketing costs and get your message in front of a stack of new, prospective clients or customers.

However, in my next post, I am going to show you something that’s more powerful than a JV and which can help you generate amazing results very, very quickly!

Your marketing mix part 2 of 2

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I am going to show you how to make your marketing more successful and more reliable, with something called your marketing mix. I am also going to give you a list and explanation of some of the most popular types of marketing, used by small and medium sized businesses.  I strongly suggest you read part one of this before proceeding.

This is a BIG marketing guide, with lots of great ideas, so please share it on your favourite social network or social bookmarking site.

In part one of this guide I shared one of the most common errors small businesses make with their marketing. The error is that they rely on just one or two different marketing activities in order to generate their sales.

This is a REALLY bad idea!

Firstly, if you rely on just one or two different forms of marketing, you are missing out on STACKS of new business and opportunities! No matter how good you are at getting the full leverage from a couple of marketing activities, you will be placing a very low ceiling on your business’s potential, if you limit yourself in this way. The most successful small businesses all use at least four or five different kinds of marketing – often 8 or 10 or more!

Secondly, by relying on just one or two marketing activities, you leave yourself extremely vulnerable when one of them stops working! A business owner emailed me to say that she relied on an advertisement in a business publication for over 90% of her sales leads. One of her competitors started advertising in the same publication and her number of leads (and sales) dropped by 40% overnight – That hurts.

So, your marketing mix should combine at least four or five different marketing activities, which compound and create a regular supply of sales for you. Here are some of the marketing options you should consider adding to YOUR marketing mix.

Advertising

A targeted message delivered through a great ad, which is read, listened to or watched by your core target client group is REALLY powerful! For a free advertising guide, click here.

Online networking or ‘social networks’

Online networking has great marketing potential. The key is to join a network that is best suited to your needs and to be selective with whom you network! Focus on the quality of people in your network and NOT just the quantity. If you develop a network of 30 well-connected, motivated, professional people and I develop a network of 3000 people who ‘just wanted to join my network’ – your network will be massively more valuable then mine.

A couple of the more popular business networks are www.ecademy.com and www.linkedin.com.  Other’s now use Facebook exclusively as a business networking tool.  I personally use Twitter and have found, like many others, that it is perhaps the most powerful of all.  Whatever network you choose, you are likely to see FAR BETTER results than through wasting your time at traditional ‘networking events’ (Click here to see why traditionasl networking is a waste of your time!)

Exhibitions

As an exhibitor at, (or visitor to), a well-attended exhibition aimed at your target client base – you can easily get to meet people face-to-face, who are almost impossible to reach using other forms of marketing. Depending on your industry or profession and the average lifetime value to your business of a client, you could find exhibiting at well-attended exhibitions an extremely valuable part of your marketing mix. I know companies who win most of their high quality work via exhibitions.

Email marketing

It’s a fact; email marketing is extremely cost effective and certainly one of the most powerful marketing tools available to small businesses. It works incredibly well – and costs little or nothing.

Here are a few things to consider before adding email marketing to your marketing mix. I recommend you build your own email database (mailing list) rather than buy one from a list broker. The best way to get started is to ask your existing clients and contacts if you can have their email address and if it’s ok for you to email them occasionally with news or special offers.

You also need to get people joining your email list from your website! To do this, make it as easy as possible, and offer something of value as an incentive for them to join your mailing list, like a free ebook. Also, only ask for their email address – not their life history, and let them know that you will never, ever pass on their details to ANYONE!

ONLY send people valuable information (like this free guide) or a genuinely special offer. I also strongly recommend that you don’t bombard people with email; just one message every week or 14 days is more than enough. I send my Newsletter out once every seven to 14 days, because people hate being bombarded with information; even great information! As a result, very few people ask to be removed from my subscriber list.

Finally, to grow your list, ask readers to forward your emails on. Obviously, making sure all the while, that you abide by the rules governing email marketing in your country.

Telephone marketing – Tele sales

Telephone marketing works – but it’s less effective than it used to be. Not that long ago, you could call someone’s direct ‘phone line and know that if they were in, they would pick up the phone. Today, people from even the smallest of companies screen all their inbound calls with voice mail; to eliminate unwanted interruptions and sales calls. This means you now need to make massively more calls to reach a smaller number of people!

I used to tell the owners of small businesses to learn how to make telemarketing calls and then set some time aside and make those calls! Today, I suggest you outsource the whole process to a proven telephone marketing company. Doing it yourself is now a low-leverage marketing activity, because it requires so much time.

Outsourced telephone marketing is still a high leverage activity, because you will usually only pay per lead or sale.

Traditional networking

Traditional networking is a total waste of your time – avoid it!

Your website

It’s not enough to simply ‘have a website’! Your website needs to work for your business 24 hours a day, 7 days a week; generating leads, making sales or collecting the email addresses of potential clients. If your website is simply an online brochure, it’s costing you a fortune in lost sales, lost profits and lost opportunities!

When your website is supported by a newsletter and some Internet marketing, the results can be transformational. Still not convinced? Without spending a penny on advertising, my Internet marketing often reaches over 2 million people in a week! I will be writing separate guides all about forum marketing, article marketing, pay-per-click and blogging shortly.

Joint ventures

Sometimes known as a J.V, a ‘Joint Venture’ is where you and another business or person get together to (usually) cross-market your services. The key to JV success, is to find someone credible, who offers a non-conflicting product or service to the exact same profile of person or business as you do.

So, if you sell recruitment services to the hospitality industry and they sell employee benefits packages to the hospitality industry – BINGO! They can include one of your flyers or letters in one of their mailings and you can do the same for them; everybody wins. Avoid doing a JV with ANYONE you contacts you via email – unless you know them or can check them out. If in doubt – leave it.

Endorsed relationships

An ‘Endorsed Relationship’ is similar to a Joint Venture – BUT with one BIG and POWERFUL difference! The person you do the venture with actually gives you their professional or personal endorsement. This is marketing gold dust.

For example: Rather than just slipping one of YOUR marketing flyers in with one of THEIR client mailings (as they would in a Joint Venture), they actually write to their clients and give you their full endorsement. This is easily the single most powerful form of referral and one of the most powerful marketing tools on the planet.

I have seen endorsed mailings return a 90% positive response rate!

Conclusion

Obviously, the above list does not cover every marketing option open to you, but I hope it gives you a few ideas.

No matter how good your service is, your future success will be determined by how good you are at winning and retaining good quality clients. As Robert Kiyosaki says, lots of people can make a better hamburger than McDonalds; but very few can sell hamburgers more successfully. In today’s super-competitive economy, your marketing is more important than ever before, so make sure you give it the time and investment it needs!